Bus Ridership Numbers: Initial Thoughts

 Through an FOI request to the City of Ottawa, I have obtained OC Transpo's ridership figures for each route, from September 2023 through August 2024. The original version, sent to me by the City of Ottawa, can be found in this link. 

A cleaned-up version that's easier to read, though missing detail by time of day which will come at a later date, can be found here. 

Busiest Routes

From the June-August 2024 dataset. 

The busiest routes in the city, by weekly ridership, are: 

1. Route 88 - 78,326 weekly riders;
2. Route 6 - 59,087 weekly riders;
3. Route 12 - 54,427 weekly riders; 
4. Route 7 - 50,142 weekly riders;
5. Route 14 - 49,517 weekly riders;
6. Route 75 - 45,269 weekly riders;
7. Route 85 - 41,669 weekly riders;
8. Route 11 - 34,012 weekly riders;
9. Route 80 - 30,232 weekly riders, and; 
10. Route 111 - 29,014 weekly riders. 

Note that this dataset covers the summer, and therefore, ridership patterns are different due to missing students. 

The least busy routes are: 

1. Route 155 - 25 weekly riders;
2. Route 154 - 30 weekly riders;
3. Route 185 (summer only) - 78 weekly riders; 
4. Route 166 - 80 weekly riders;
5. Route 139 (summer only) - 121 weekly riders; 
6. Route 114 - 130 weekly riders; 
7. Route 158 - 135 weekly riders; 
8. Route 187 - 155 weekly riders; 
9. Route 190 - 179 weekly riders, and; 
10. Route 141 - 225 weekly riders. 

There is the obvious correlation that the busier routes are those with higher service. Most of the busiest routes primarily serve urban areas inside the Greenbelt and in the urban core, though some routes run trunk service to the outer suburbs. 

This article is short. I am posting this because I received a response to my FOI request today, and I do not want to sit on the data, which OC Transpo has kept out of the public eye for a long time. Good night everyone.